Disabling SSO and allowing sign up to forum for anyone

Product Support WordPress

AI-generated summary

The discussion revolves around disabling Single Sign-On (SSO) and allowing public access to a Discourse forum while still maintaining automatic sign-up for WordPress users. joey88 initially inquires about the implications of disabling SSO, and pfaffman explains that users will need to generate passwords, and WordPress users will no longer be automatically logged in.

There are two primary options: keeping SSO enabled, requiring all users to log in through WordPress, or disabling SSO, losing auto-login functionality, but enabling public access to the forum. A middle ground, allowing auto-login and public access, would likely require a custom WordPress plugin joey88.

joey88 also explores the possibility of appending parameters to a query string on the forum URL to auto-login users from WordPress. pfaffman suggests an alternative middle ground, configuring WordPress to behave like a social login, allowing the forum to be public while still requiring logins to go through WordPress.

1

Hi,

Our client currently is using the plugin with SSO enabled and their WordPress site controls the users. We have added some custom work to adjust user trust levels in Discourse to distinguish between members and non-members (MemberPress is being used) but apart from that everything is out of the box.

My query is this: if the client now wishes to make the forum public (anyone can access regardless of whether they are a user/member on the WordPress install) but still wishes WordPress users to automatically be signed up to the forum is it safe to imply disable SSO? What are the implications of this? I’m expecting users will need to run through a password reset or similar on the Discourse side?

Any information would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks in advance,
Joey

2

You can disable sso and users will have to generate passwords with the forgot password feature. And WordPress users will no longer be automatically logged in.

3

@pfaffman thanks for the quick reply. So really there are 2 choices here:

  • Keep SSO enabled and ALL users must login through WordPress
  • Disable SSO and lose functionality for users being auto-logged in when accessing forum from WordPress BUT enable public access to forum

I assume a middle ground where users are auto-logged in from WordPress and still allowing public would require a custom plugin on the WordPress side?

4

Is there anything in place, for instance, where we can append some parameters to a query string on the forum URL to auto login users from WordPress (we already have users being created in Discourse automatically when a user is created in WordPress). I’m just thinking of the easiest way to enable auto-login without SSO.
Cheers!

5

That’s right. Another middle ground might be to get wordpress to behave like a social login.

You can make discourse public in the sense that login is not required to see discourse, But logins will still go through WordPress.